COMMON THREAD BETWEEN E-COMMERCE AND REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT
The highest rate of real estate investments in the last 5 years in Europe has certainly been achieved by the logistics sector. Savills records the phenomenon of exponential nature summarizing that in Italy alone last year almost 3 million euros were invested in logistics real estate. The catalyst for this reaction unimaginable only ten years ago was not only Covid-19 the development of e-commerce as one might guess at first thought but several other more or less “submerged” but equally effective factors. The development of technology related to warehousing and order fulfillment has fostered the demand for ever larger and more efficient areas of goods containment and storage. This is both in intermediate stages of pure waiting and in advanced, capillarized stages known as micro-logistics or last-mile logistics. Therefore large so-called “containing” infrastructure (over 15,000 sq. m.) but also deep redevelopment of urban (just a few hundred sq. m.) or suburban (between 4,000 and 10,000 sq. m.) properties.
Increasingly fast and customized deliveries require just-in-time accommodations, great flexibility and territorial coverage. Another factor is the great opportunity to reconvert old warehouses and industrial areas or obsolete warehouses that had suffered a significant decline in value into true smart storage and sorting HUBs. An impetus to create new real estate developments where areas were depressed and to redevelop properties that had long been left unused. The trend is a move closer to urban neighborhoods.
The new global logistical reorganization has also forcefully released domestic demand for land, transformations in land uses and very rapid opportunities for placement for income or capital that have allowed the explosion of a real estate boom in this area. Another interesting factor is the increase of retailers in the territory by expanding signs in hitherto unexplored Italian municipalities and provinces (Lidl, Md, Penny, Tigros etc… just to name a few). This phenomenon due to the commercial policies of territorial presidium and greater consumer billing capacity of convenience goods are dictating in a major way the incremental needs to locate supply centers close to consumer communities. This is to ensure speed of reorders, delivery and excellent fresh storage at reduced cost relative to the time/distance factor. Still the real estate impulse can be ascribed to the -value — effect, in which sectors expressing high rate of development attract to themselves considerable financial capital that drives up the prices and consequently the potential — capital gain. The risks is the bubble effect but according to the estimates of leading research and economic — real estate assessment bodies the trend will certainly go on for another five years at a sustained rate.
Of course that will be subject to economic cycles, price increases and new economic policies not the least of which is incremental taxation but through wise strategic policies of sustainability and innovation the trend will continue.
Edited by reFRAME Editorial Staff
